Augmented reality applications allow a user to see a presentation of the world augmented with or superimposed by computer-generated imagery. The imagery may be graphical or textual. The presented world may be presented directly to the user, such as when the user is looking through a display, and the imagery is applied to or projected on the display. The world may also be presented indirectly, such as when a user is navigating previously captured images of the real world, rather than the world that is presently in front of the user.
Augmented reality is now being implemented on mobile computing devices that include digital cameras. In such implementations, the view that is currently being captured by the camera can be displayed as a scene on a screen of the mobile device, and data about items that are shown in the scene may have textual annotations added to them. Non-visible objects may also be represented by annotations. Thus, for example, a user in a city may hold their smartphone in front of them and may be shown the names of restaurants around them, in the compass direction at which they are currently aiming the camera of their phone. The information may change as a user spins, so that only restaurants that are in front of the user/device are shown at any time. However, it can be difficult to determine precisely where the user is aiming their device, because the camera may simultaneously show multiple items, such as buildings, particularly when the items are at different distances from the user, and thus overlap within the device's field of view.